


Leave a Mark

by idyll



Category: Leverage
Genre: Found Families, OT3, Other, The Next Generation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-20 18:56:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17627777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idyll/pseuds/idyll
Summary: The Leverage team was never pulled together by Victor Dubenich but their prodigies still bring them together.





	Leave a Mark

**Author's Note:**

> This is very A/U. Essentially I’m taking a lot of scenarios and characters from all of Leverage with no regard for timeline whatsoever.

Eliot’s five years out of the Army—Special Forces, thank you very fucking much—and one year out of working for one of Vance’s little dance teams when he gets hired by some tech guy whose daughter’s been kidnapped. Eliot’s just making his name as a Retrieval Expert and the Dad’s apparently sunk so much of his cash and liquid assets into his house that he can’t afford someone more seasoned.

The job doesn’t pay much, but Eliot has some free time before he meets with some Moreau guy to talk about joining his operation, so he takes it.

Eliot ends up dodging sniper scopes and shooting Eastern Europeans in the middle of a carnival during off hours. He finishes the evening with a gunshot wound to the shoulder, a head wound that requires stitches and gives him a concussion, eight dead enemy goons, five guns, one really dead ex-nanny, and ten thousand dollars in unmarked bills. 

More importantly, he ends the night carrying the bravest ten-year-old he’s ever met out to meet her terrified father in the parking lot of said carnival. Molly loses it when she sees her father but won’t let go of Eliot, so he’s the awkward third wheel in this family hug.

Except not, because the Dad—John Connell—gets scared straight to therapy where he finally deals with his wife’s loss, fixes the hot mess he created with his grief-stricken work shenanigans, and starts rebuilding his relationship with his daughter. 

And that, somehow, involves a move to California that Connell wants Eliot to be included in.

“Molly has nightmares,” Connell shares over lunch. 

Eliot sips his coffee and doesn’t think of how he put off a meeting with one of Moreau’s guys to fly back to New England to have coffee with this guy.

“She calms down when she wakes up, now,” Connell continues. “Her therapist talked her through everything, and walked her through some techniques, and the only thing that calms her down, well….” Connell seems to shrink on himself as he turns his head away. “It’s you. She thinks of you rescuing her and she calms down and goes to sleep.”

Eliot leans back. “Just what exactly are you asking for here?”

“I just—she remembers you fighting. She wants that kind of control. I want to pay you to train her in self-defense so that she feels safer.”

The figure Connell names is far less impressive than the fee he recently paid Eliot, and loses most of its value when a cost of living adjustment is applied.

Eliot says yes anyway, because Molly joins them after lunch and she’s got shards in her eyes and paper thin skin and Eliot remembers leaning over her next to a tea cups ride and letting that bullet slam into his shoulder rather than pierce her skull.

*  
The cost of living in SoCal is ridiculous. Connell chose Long Beach over Los Angeles, which helps a little, but six months in Eliot is pulling from his savings often enough that he knows he’ll tap out sooner rather than later if he doesn’t find another source of income. 

Eliot gets the idea to start a business when he realizes his usual line of work would conflict with the Connell job. 

The first and easiest idea is some kind of gym or dojo, but for some reason Eliot finds the idea strangely unappealing. He enjoys working with Molly and is committed to making sure she can take down people five times her size and will always be able to consider herself a weapon she can use in her own defense. He just doesn’t think he’ll enjoy teaching _other_ people.

The answer comes one evening after he spends a few hours guiding Molly through some Judo throws in a spare room in the modest Connell home on the Peninsula. The house is small, even if it costs a fortune, but is right on the beach down a strip of Ocean Boulevard that doesn’t get a lot of through traffic.

John Connell reordered his priorities before leaving Boston and has carried through with prioritizing Molly, but he still is trying to rebuild a business so there’s been some compromises. Eliot trains Molly on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, and on those days Connell works late and Eliot rustles up dinner for Molly and makes sure she does her homework. Technically he’s babysitting but after a while it feels less like that and more like looking after his kid sister. Whatever. The shards in Molly’s eyes aren’t so jagged anymore, her nightmares have improved, and she managed to almost successfully get the upper hand on him once, and that’s all that matters to Eliot.

Well, enough money coming in on a regular basis also matters, hence the business idea that Molly gives him.

“Can I pay you to make these cheesy pastry things for my school event next week?” she asks after she eats three of them and is high on desserts.

“No, but I’ll help you make a batch,” Eliot counters, and Molly agrees after spending the entire post-dinner washing up whining about how mean he is.

It gets Eliot to thinking, though. 

*  
Restaurants are hell from an operational and (lack of) free time perspective, so Eliot regretfully decides against that angle because his priority has to be Molly right now. Maybe a few years down the line…

Anyway, something that involves food is ideal, and he does an environmental scan of the city’s local businesses and decides that a pastry shop downtown suits him best, mostly because he can justify only having morning hours with that type of product.

“What are you going to call it?” Molly asks him one afternoon.

Eliot reaches out and taps at her left elbow, nudges an ankle with his own foot. He’s been teaching her a combination of styles rather than sticking to one, which has caused some confusion, but he’s not worried as the idea isn’t for her to compete. Technically, the only goal is for her to feel safer, but Eliot thought about all those big men with guns from the carnival and made the executive decision that what he taught her should be useful in real life. 

Molly corrects her position and Eliot walks around her, examining it from all angles. “Better. Krav Maga has a very distinctive stance, okay? You can’t half-ass it.”

Molly gives a dramatic pre-teen huff. “Distinctive stance, distinctive kicks, distinctive throws—“ Her eyes widen and she drops the stance entirely to spin on her heel and stare at Eliot. “Wait, that’s it. Distinctive!”

Eliot arches a brow. “This isn’t brainstorming time, it’s training time. Get back in position.”

“I know that face,” Molly crows even as she moves herself back into place, correctly, without thinking too much about it. “That means you like it. I want a cut of the profits.”

*  
A week later she and Eliot make a batch of cheesy pastry things for her school event, and he shows her the logo that he paid a kid in City College’s graphic design program to make.

“I knew it,” she says around a mouthful of flaky dough. “Where are my profits?”

 

“You’ll get them in weekly installments in exchange for manning the register and helping in the back.”

Molly is wholly unimpressed. “That’s not a profit share, that’s A Job.”

Eliot smiles benevolently. “Your dad thinks it’s a great idea. Said things about responsibility, accountability, fiscal acuity and college applications.”

Molly groans like she’s dying and throws herself across the kitchen island, the last of her pastry sticking out of her mouth.

Eliot can’t stop smiling as he starts cleaning up.

*

Eliot never knew how much bureaucracy and fees were involved in starting a business. He’s not a dumb guy but the whole process makes him feel like one. He knows that Molly has watched him doing a one-step-forward, one-step-back dance in the process, and has commented on how grumpy it’s making him, but he’s still surprised when her father corners him on a Thursday evening.

Connell comes home a bit earlier than usual and invites Eliot to have a beer.

They shoot the shit for a good fifteen minutes before Eliot starts peeling the label from his beer and squints at Connell. “This about the school meeting on Monday?” he asks.

Connell grimaces and shakes his head. “No, but I do want your thoughts on that.”

Eliot nods. He wasn’t surprised when the school called Connell about Molly. She hasn’t fully gotten over what happened back in Boston. She probably never will, actually, which won’t be a bad thing down the line when she’s older, more well-adjusted, and knows how to use the rage inside of her constructively. But for right now she just...overcompensates when she feels slighted or threatened or when she thinks someone else is being treated unfairly or, god help them all, bullied. Eliot’s already done some research and put together some thoughts on how to help Molly learn to corral her emotions as much as she can. That’s apparently for later though.

“Molly told me about the bakery you want to open.”

Technically it’s not a bakery but Eliot doesn’t bother going into that because he needs to stop what’s about to happen. “No.”

Connell smiles faintly. “That’s what she said you’d say, so I prepared.”

And boy did he ever. Connell has spent the last eight months getting himself back to a good place financially, and he’s even increased Eliot’s fees. He absolutely could afford to front a bunch of money for Eliot to get on his feet.

“The money ain’t the issue,” Eliot eventually says. “It’s the process. Well, and finding space.”

Connell frowns thoughtfully. “I might be able to help with both of those things.”

Turns out, he can. He reaches out to his shiny new network and connects Eliot to someone in the City to walk him through the bureaucracy in excruciating detail, and also to a client’s buddy’s cousin, who is about to have a space available for lease downtown.

In exchange, Eliot preps two months worth of meals for Molly and her Dad. 

*

Molly and John, dressed in shirts plastered with the Distinctive logo, are both on hand to give out samples when Eliot holds a soft open for Distinctive. Eliot is wearing a t-shirt of his own and makes the rounds to mingle with customers and fellow business owners alike.

By the time the promotion event finishes at the end of a week, Eliot has five catering orders booked for the next year and two dozen pre-orders for pastries over the next few months.

He’s also got a new routine with Molly, developed with Connell and Molly’s therapist, that includes a morning meditation session to help her deal with her anger issues.

*

Distinctive doesn’t open its doors to the public until six on Mondays but by three Eliot has already let himself into the back. He stands in the middle of his kitchen, breathes deep and thinks of the unusual humidity that clung to him during his drive in, the endless blue sky stretching out behind the Pacific, and the citrus trees in his yard he picked from yesterday.

Lemon, lime…skip the orange. Perfect.

He makes up tarts whose shells fall apart at the smallest amount of moisture, and whose citrus flavor bursts into the mouth like a hint of freshness.

He makes airy puff pastries stuffed with the lightest lemon filling he can make, and there’s hardly any substance to it but the flavor unfolds like a slow exhale.

He freezes molds filled with key lime pie filling and knows they’ll melt onto the tongue, heavy and cool, and with a hint of chili to follow.

Welcome to November in Southern California.

*  
Molly comes in at six-thirty on the dot, her father dropping her off on his way to the office in a nearby office tower.

The line is eight people long and most of the morning’s Distinctive specialties are gone. Molly goes right into the back and comes out five minutes later expertly carrying four trays of standards—donuts, muffins, cupcakes and the like—that she settles into the display.

“Morning,” she greets and sneaks behind where Eliot is packaging one of each for the owner of the roller derby supply shop three doors down.

Eliot grunts. “Did you take out—“

“Another set of standards, yeah.”

“Good.” Eliot nods at another of his part time employees. “Take the register.”

Technically, Molly doesn’t actually work at Distinctive in the mornings, even though she handles rolling over the standards when she gets in. 

Eliot ushers her into the back room next to the kitchen and Molly follows dutifully. He gestures at her. “Come on, you know the drill.”

Molly squares her stance and Eliot watches her go through a delicately difficult kata, one that he’s modified for her so that she can center herself before school. The kata itself isn’t useful to winning competitions, but it’s helped reduce Molly’s in school suspensions by seventy-two percent, so they do this every weekday morning.

The constant spark of hurt anger at the back of her eyes is soothed when she’s finished and Eliot gives her a high five and watches her go on her way.

The Distinctive specials are gone five minutes later, and the crowd tapers off soon after.

*

Olivia comes in a week later, timing it so that she arrives just as the morning rush ends.

*


End file.
